Skip links

Main navigation

The Scoop on Balance

by Sandy Cooper

  • Finding Your Holiday Balance, Part One: Your Holiday To-Don’t List

    If you struggle with balance on a regular day, the holiday season — with all its obligations and expectations — can send you into complete and utter chaos. What is aggressively marketed as The Most Wonderful Time of the Year feels more like stress and debt and five pounds of fat around your midsection. Ask… [Continue Reading]

    Finding Your Holiday Balance, Part One: Your Holiday To-Don’t List

  • Balance Tip: Consider Your Future Self

    Present-Moment Sandy often gets irritated with Past Sandy. Present-Moment Sandy (we’ll go ahead and call her PMS….you know…because she’s irritated) will wake up to a sink full of dishes and think, “Darn you, Past Sandy! Why didn’t you wash these yesterday?” PMS will walk into the bedroom, see the unmade bed, and get all judgy… [Continue Reading]

    Balance Tip: Consider Your Future Self

  • How Routines Help Us (and Tips for Establishing Them)

    I love mornings. This, coming from the girl who used to need to set an alarm to get up at the crack of 10. I have created a well-established morning routine* that has taken me years (!) to tweak and perfect. As my kids grow and seasons of life change, so do some of the… [Continue Reading]

    How Routines Help Us (and Tips for Establishing Them)

  • How I Manage Anxiety Every Day

    During my long break from EVERYTHING in January, I rediscovered the invaluable practice of radical self-care. Within a few short days of clearing my calendar, prioritizing sleep, nourishing my body with the best foods, and staying off social media, my anxiety level dropped to zero and remained that way for a solid month. It was… [Continue Reading]

    How I Manage Anxiety Every Day

  • 21 Questions to Ask Yourself When You’re Feeling Off-Balance

    A few months ago, I bought a new car. My old car served me well through seven years and 140,000 miles—even in the midst of countless spills, potty accidents, and 18-hour road trips. My poor car bears the scars of a family, for sure. It has long scratches down each door where kids scraped their… [Continue Reading]

    21 Questions to Ask Yourself When You’re Feeling Off-Balance

  • Finding Your Balance: It’s Launch Day!

    LADIES AND GENTLEMAN! (okay, actually just Ladies) After a full year of writing and two decades of living, studying, teaching, and tweaking this material, my new book Finding Your Balance is available FOR YOU TO BUY! *throws confetti* The material in this book is more personal and life-changing to me than anything I’ve ever written.… [Continue Reading]

    Finding Your Balance: It’s Launch Day!

Finding Your Holiday Balance, Part One: Your Holiday To-Don’t List

If you struggle with balance on a regular day, the holiday season — with all its obligations and expectations — can send you into complete and utter chaos. What is aggressively marketed as The Most Wonderful Time of the Year feels more like stress and debt and five pounds of fat around your midsection.

Ask me how I know this.

A few weeks ago, I asked you, “What is your biggest struggle with balance over the holidays?” Apparently, I’m not the only one who struggles with holiday balance. Your answers ran the full gamut, from finances to family dynamics, from busyness to boundaries. I’m sorry/not sorry you have so many balance issues this time of year. Sorry, because I love you and hate to see you struggle. Not sorry, because I’m happy I’m not alone.

Turns out, the holidays tend to reveal whatever balance issues we’ve had all year long — only they’re bigger and sparklier and involve baked goods.

Balance is a spiritual condition (peace) whereby we know our priorities (what we should do) and live our priorities (how we should do it) through freedom in Christ (using our God-given gifts and talents, while also understanding and respecting our limitations). ~Finding Your Balance~

I, for one, would love to get to January, reflect back, and think, “That was a beautiful and meaningful holiday season.” But I know in order for that to happen, I must be very intentional about it. For me, Holiday Balance won’t happen accidentally.

So, today, I’m starting a series that will run weekly-ish through New Year’s Day. This is for all of us who need some help getting a grip, so we can move through the next six weeks with our peace and priorities firmly in place.

In this series, we will hit Holiday Balance from every angle and in no particular order…

  • Establishing and maintaining family traditions
  • Moving through seasons of loss and change
  • Keeping a handle on the finances and figuring out how much is too much
  • Enjoying holiday food without adding holiday pounds
  • Steering clear of the Comparison Trap
  • People Pleasing, weird family dynamics, and establishing some good boundaries
  • Perfectionism and unrealistic expectations
  • Busyness — how to deal with holiday events on top of an already overly-busy life
  • Keeping Christ the center of it all, because He is all that really matters

 

First Things First

We will never achieve balance (peace to live out our priorities) if we try to do everything. So, the first thing we must do is decide what we WON’T do. Balance is about saying no to good things so we can say yes to better things. It’s looking at everything on the plate and scraping half of it into the garbage (or maybe putting it into a tupperware container for later).

Balance requires prayerful neglect.

Think about the traditions you want to preserve and the events or activities that mean the most to you and your family, and guard those with your life. Everything else is negotiable.

As families grow and change, so will your cherished traditions. Don’t become so rigid that you can’t let things go from year-to-year. This isn’t life or death — it’s Thanksgiving and Christmas. Perspective is important while we make our plans.

For me, I have about four family traditions I am guarding this year. They are simple things we do almost every year that all my kids talk about and look forward to:

  • Serving the homeless on Thanksgiving morning.
  • Decorating our home for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, while I make homemade soup, and we bust out the Christmas music.
  • Christmas Eve pasta shells (I know…weird Christmas Eve food. I started this as a newlywed because it was one of about three dinners I knew how to cook), and then driving around to look at Christmas lights.
  • Traveling to our hometown later that week to celebrate with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.

We do lots of other things, too. But none of them are sacred, and none of them are too important to toss off the agenda from one year to the next.

With those few activities firmly in place, I consider everything else based on its life-giving/life-sucking value. If it’s life-sucking, it goes directly on The Holiday To-Don’t List. If it’s life-giving, or is super-meaningful to my husband or children, I try to fit it in somewhere.

Your Holiday To-Don’t List should be uniquely yours. Only you know what sucks life out of you and what makes your heart sing.

If you love writing out personal greetings and addressing envelopes, then you probably should send Christmas cards. If you love baking, then make lots and lots of cookies. If you love decorating your entire house in October or shopping at 3 am on Black Friday or wearing a sparkly dress at a fancy party while you ring in the New Year, then, by all means, get jiggy with it.

But if any of that makes you want to crawl in a hole and die, you should consider adding it to your Holiday To Don’t List.

After prayerful consideration, here are some items on my 2018 Holiday To-Don’t List:

Make food no one will eat. Yes, everyone I know serves that green bean casserole with the cream of mushroom soup and fried onions; and yes, every year I have tried to add some sort of green vegetable to the table. But since my family prefers to eat mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, turkey, and stuffing on Thanksgiving, then I’m making that. It’s one meal. They will live.

Eat food I will later regret. By all means, I very much plan to eat holiday treats. But there’s a fine line between “enjoying a piece of pie” and “eating a pie.” I know where that line is, and I’m not crossing it this year.

Over-buy for my kids. This one is so hard for me. I’ll think I’m finished shopping…and then I’ll take inventory and realize one kid has two more presents than everyone else. So, I’ll shop again to even things out, only to realize one kid has several big gifts, but another kid is getting mostly socks and books. So, I’ll hop on Amazon and order something for the socks/book kid to even things out, etc, etc, etc. No one needs more stuff. No one wants to cram more things into the closets. This year, I will buy meaningful gifts the kids need and want, and I will not buy too much.

Attend events I don’t want to attend. There is no law saying I must attend every holiday event to which I receive an invitation. Amen.

Do any “tradition” out of obligation. Christmas cards? Baking 13 dozen cookies? Stringing lights across every bush in the front yard? If it doesn’t bring me great joy and happiness (or bring my very favorite people great joy and happiness) then I’m not doing it.

Let social media decide when I should listen to Christmas music, decorate my home, have my presents bought and wrapped, say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. I get to decide all of this. In fact, because social media tends to steal my joy over the holidays, I will be spending very limited time there. (Take THAT, Facebook and Instagram!)

Skip healthy meals, exercise, or rest so I can “get Christmas stuff done.” I have fallen into this trap many times in Christmas Past. Neglecting self-care makes me crabby and unpleasant to be around. This does not serve my family well, as you might imagine.

***

Q4U: What’s one thing that you’re putting on your 2018 Holiday To-Don’t List? 

***

If you’d like to read more about the importance of the To-Don’t List here are a few more posts I’ve written on the subject.

What I Prayerfully Neglect for the Sake of Balance

Revisiting My To-Don’t List

I Don’t Have Enough Time

***

If you’d like to learn more about finding your balance year ’round, I’ve written a book about that. You can buy it here. Finding Your Balance

 

Balance Tip: Consider Your Future Self

Present-Moment Sandy often gets irritated with Past Sandy.

Present-Moment Sandy (we’ll go ahead and call her PMS….you know…because she’s irritated) will wake up to a sink full of dishes and think, “Darn you, Past Sandy! Why didn’t you wash these yesterday?”

PMS will walk into the bedroom, see the unmade bed, and get all judgy about Past Sandy “Again? Did she do nothing this morning? Is Past Sandy too good to take the five minutes necessary to make the bed? Who does Past Sandy think she is?”

The sad irony is that PMS does the exact same thing to Future Sandy! She leaves things undone for Future Sandy to do. (This is getting complicated…stick with me.)

PMS, will see the mail pile sitting on the counter begging to be sorted. But instead of taking the two minutes necessary to complete the chore, she’ll decide to be true to the present moment.

The mail pile will be here tomorrow. This moment is not for sorting mail! No! This moment is for LIVING LIFE TO THE FULLEST! *insert inspirational soundtrack here*

She’ll do the same with the laundry pile. And the shoe pile. PMS decides All The Piles are much too insignificant to tend to in the present moment (because a tidy house is the sign of a misspent life or something), so she leaves them, undone, for Future Sandy.

Therefore, in the moment, PMS despises doing the tasks Past Sandy neglected, while at the exact same time, loves leaving tasks undone for Future Sandy.

Confused by all the Sandys and all the moments?

Let me clarify:

Ignoring a chore and leaving it for later is so decadent. Procrastination is truly wonderful in the moment! It’s so gratifying to take a deep breath and say, “It’ll be there tomorrow…I’ll worry about it then. Instead, I’ll create a meme about the importance of living in the moment and post it to my social media accounts.”

As a card-carrying Rule Follower and generally organized and disciplined person, I feel a little rebellious when I look a sink full of dishes in the eye and say, “Not today, dishes!”

But rarely am I pleased with myself when I do so. In the end, it’s never quite as satisfying as what I imagined. I never wake up and say, “WOW! I’m soooo glad I left the kitchen a complete disaster so I could walk in to a mess and try to clean it now that the food has cemented onto the plates. That was so worth it. I’ll ignore my dishes after every meal from now on.”

No, instead I end up, first of all: shocked. Because I tend to forget I rebelled against the dishes yesterday.

Next: irritated. Because I don’t really have time to chisel food off plates before I start making breakfast for the kids at 6:45 am.

Then: under-my-breath self-loathing. Because I procrastinated, and procrastination didn’t make my life any simpler in the long run. Procrastination actually bit me in the butt.

After repeating this cycle dozens of times, I finally decided to consider my Future Self.

Will she want to come home to this later?

Wake up to this tomorrow?

Walk in on this a few hours from now?

Will she be happy that I left this for her?

If the answer is “no,” I buck up and do the task right away. If I have the power, ability, and time to do so, I do so.

I take five minutes to stop the car and fill up the gas tank, so Future Sandy doesn’t need to rush around in the morning.

I take two minutes to make the bed, so Future Sandy can walk into an orderly bedroom later.

I take one minute and set up the coffee pot, so Future (tired) Sandy can wake up and simply press “start.”

I take ten seconds to rinse off the plate and put it in the dishwasher, so Future Sandy can cook dinner in a clean kitchen.

I take five seconds to lay out clothes for the morning, so Future Sandy doesn’t have to stumble through the dark bedroom and make wardrobe decisions before coffee.

I take two seconds to stop at the recycle bin and drop in the junk mail, so Future Sandy doesn’t have to sort through a giant pile at the end of the week.

Is it mildly inconvenient to complete tasks right away rather than ignore them?

Yep.

But it is much more comfortable than coming face-to-face with the undone task later…and (surprise!) still needing to complete it.

It’ll be there tomorrow, sure. But it will be there on top of all the tasks of tomorrow. Just do it now. #bettermeme

Consider your Future Self, like she’s another person, separate from you.

What would increase her happiness and peace? What would give her that little boost of energy early in the morning? What would set her up for a successful day? What would help her unwind in the evening? What would she be so thankful that you took the time to do instead of leaving it for her?

Do that thing. Be extra kind to her. You never know what your Future Self may be dealing with.

Weekend Links {23} and a life update

Apparently, I’ve been remiss in keeping up with Weekend Links. The last version, Weekend Links {22}, was published in March—of 2017!!!!!!

Ahem.

You may be asking yourself, “What in heaven’s name is Sandy doing with all her time, if not curating for us a weekly list of worthy weekend reading material?????”

And that brings me to the theme of Weekend Links {23} and the answer to that question:

Update on Sandy’s Life:

Well, since my last post, May happened.

When kids are still in school, May is just a whole thing…mostly a blur…I don’t know.

June was a month of extremes.

On the good extreme, Jon and I took advantage of our two youngest kids being at church camp during the same week and flew to New York City to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary a little early. In 21 years of parenting, we have never, ever been away from our kids longer than 3 nights. This is mainly because we don’t live near family, so leaving longer than that involves paying someone a crap-load of money to live at my house for days and cart my children everywhere, or it means farming out kids to various homes. It aways seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

But, alas, 25 years of marriage is worthy of a proper celebration…so we did.  We will celebrate again in October, for our actual anniversary. Because: omg…25 years!

On the bad extreme, my brother Mark died, suddenly, unexpectedly.

This happened days before our NYC trip, so we ended up going on our trip, coming home, and immediately leaving for Ohio for the funeral.

Mark was 12 years older than me, never married, had no kids.

Of the seven kids, he is #3…I’m #7.

Since my dad died last summer, Mark and I texted almost daily.

He was insanely intelligent, musical, opinionated, kind, and hilarious.

I miss him so much.

***

In the midst of all of that, I’ve being speaking and writing a little here and there.

Everything Sandy Has Been Working On:

1. On Mother’s Day, I had the distinct privilege of speaking to our congregation at my church. I have spoken many times at my church (to the women, teaching Wednesday night classes, leading Bible Study, even sharing the stage with several other women on a Sunday morning), but never had my pastor given me the entire sermon to address our congregation on a Sunday morning. It was so fun.

Since it was Mother’s Day, I spoke specifically to all the tired moms and the people who love them (this includes everyone). If you are a tired mom, and you have people in your life who love you, encourage them to listen. You may also want to slip this under your husband’s pillow and play it while he sleeps.

You can listen in here:

How to Breathe Life into a Tired Mom

 

2. A few weeks ago, a freelance writer contacted me regarding a post I wrote back in 2001 (Sam-e For Depression) where I talked about my success in using Sam-e to manage my depression. She called and interviewed me, and then used my story in her article.

You can read her article here:

Everything You Need to Know About Using Sam-e For Depression.

 

3. Last week, I was interviewed by my new friend, Nickilee Gurovich, on The Healthy Happy Mommy Podcast. We talked all about my book, Finding Your Balance, chatted about priorities, gratitude, learning to say ‘no,’ and really zeroed on on Comparison. It was such a fun conversation!

You can listen or watch here:

listen to us on the podcast

watch us on YouTube

 

4. In case you missed this, I wrote a guest post for The Glorious Table about what my daughter Elliana is teaching me about approaching God.

You can read that here:

When We Ask

 

5. And finally, I learned something valuable this month: it takes me approximately 273 hours of focused work to create an online quiz–give or take.

No, seriously.

I love taking online quizzes (I mean, how else would I know what Disney Princess I am?) and so I had this crazy idea that I’d create one for you! Except I sorely misjudged the amount of time it would take to create. I thought maybe a day or two, tops.

Little did I know, creating that darn quiz was all I would do for two weeks straight.

It was so. much. work.

But, it’s finished now!

Yay!

(she says, as she lies breathless and sweaty on the ground…her kids, glassy-eyed…foraging around in the pantry for food…).

If you haven’t taken it yet, you can take it here:

What’s Your Busyness Personality?

 

***

And don’t forget, if you haven’t yet picked up a copy of my book

Finding Your Balance,

you can buy it on

Amazon

for $14.99.

 

Have a peaceful weekend, friends.

Love,

Sandy

When We Ask

My daughter, Elliana, has this amusing habit when she wants something from me. Not just any old something, mind you, but something she thinks I won’t give her. She’ll say with a big heavy sigh, “I wish I could have candy.” Or she’ll drop her head and shoulders and mumble, “I bet you won’t let me watch TV right now.”

She doesn’t actually ask me for anything. She “wishes” for it or “bets me” that I won’t let her have it. Sometimes she doesn’t even say these things directly to me. She says them just loud enough for me to hear them, though.

It tickles me and irritates me at the same time.

I used to ignore her when she’d do this, hoping she’d get the hint to ask for things properly. But she didn’t take the hint. So I started responding to her statements with, “Are you asking me? Or just wishing for it?” She still didn’t take the hint.

Finally, I spoke plainly to her: “If you want a piece of candy, then ask me. Say, ‘Mom, may I please have a piece of candy?’”

***

Today I’m honored to be a guest at The Glorious Table, where I share how God taught me a precious truth through this interaction with my daughter. Please join me there to continue reading.